Prior to Alternet deleting my soapbox [blog] some years back, I used post a special edition of this ‘story’ up as a Christmas tradition.

Imagine Bing Crosby crooning “I’m dreaming of a White Christmas…” ’24’ is on TV with the sound off. Don reaches over and places his hand softly on Dick’s knee, chuckles, and says “Did you hear Ben Bonk’s sob story?”

Cheney puts his hand over Don’s and gives an affectionate squeeze. “I laughed to tears…” The next day they went quail hunting.

Free speech clown series

Don Rumsfeld & Dick Cheney’s Dog

You all have heard of the first grade primer ‘Dick and Jane’? Well, as fate would have it, Dick did not grow up to love Jane, because Dick (like Don) matured into a homosexual in denial, or “RRR” (sounds like a Rottweiler growl), one of those closet morality, socially/sexually frustrated and consequently mean people known as a Religious Right Republican.

So, this has to be a adult repressed homosexual ‘dick’, or machismo porn variation, of the ‘Dick and Jane’ story. Consequently, the story of how Don Rumsfeld met his demise, because of Dick Cheney’s dog, is pretty screwed up.

It’s called: Don and ‘dick’

Rumsfeld was visiting ‘big dick’ Cheney at Cheney’s ‘spread’ in Wyoming, Cheney was wishing he could have shot George Bush in the face with his shotgun because the coward George flinched and did not pull the trigger on Iran…

While reminiscing missed opportunities at initiating Armageddon, wishing they could have shot more people in the face, especially more Arabs, and about their longing for certain fascists to be in their lives, past and present, secular and religious.. among other things, Rummy suddenly asked ‘big dick’ why his Rottweiler, “Machismo”, was always locked in his kennel.

Mean people have mean dogs and, Dick explained to Don that “Machismo” had an edge about him, Machismo simply could not be trusted around visitors. Dick went on to explain how he wished it were otherwise and how he wished Machismo could be trusted to obey him and only tear apart people that he did not like, he’d tried dog trainers but they cost him money, too much money, because Machismo took a chuck of flesh out of all of them, every dog trainer he had tried. His insurance premiums had gone sky high, all on account of Machismo.

Rumsfeld: “Why don’t you get a different dog?”

Cheney: “Because I love my Machismo.”

Then Don had an idea.

Rumsfeld: “Hey Dick, there is the Arapaho Indian Reservation right up the road, why don’t you get a Medicine Man to take the edge off your Machismo? I saw on the Discovery Channel the Indians can talk to animals, you know they are all devil worshippers, so maybe there is something to it.”

Dick’s eyes brightened considerably, an amazing thing, as though a light had turned on upstairs, but then his brow furrowed back to normal, as though nobody were home.

Cheney: “That’s the problem. They are all devil worshipers, you know, Indians are sorcerers like the Old Testament forbids be ‘found among us.’”

So Don and Dick discussed that and came up with a solution. If they were not at Dick’s ‘spread’ while the medicine man worked with Dick’s Machismo, the sorcerer would not be found ‘among them’ and it would all be ok in the end, because St Paul had said “All things work together for good” for Christians like Don and Dick. So they sent a Secret Service agent to find a medicine man with an explanation of how Dick would like the edge taken off of his Machismo, and then went quail hunting, so the Indian sorcerer would not be ‘found among them.’

The secret service agent found a medicine man, a Blackfoot married to an Arapaho and living in Wyoming, a typical dumb Indian, who with a look of stunned disbelief, kept asking the agent again and again “What!?” After the agent had identified himself four times and explained Dick Cheney wanted the edge taken off his Machismo eight times, a light filled this Blackfoot Indian’s eyes, this agent was serious, and the devil was right at home.

Indians know when the gods deliver the opportunity of a lifetime, and this was opportunity at redemption. It had been awhile since the medicine men had been noticed, that is, the now days scarce authentic ones, and the agent had stumbled onto the real McCoy. First and foremost, this Indian believed in the Native law of reciprocity and well knew how it worked, something the Whitemen had not sorted out since Jesus had told them about it two millennia ago: “As you sow, so shall you reap.”

In this Indian’s world view, the opportunity was all about deliverance, and the attending attrition from any consequence, a sort of natural quantum mechanics shamanic death manifest by friendly fire, simply would have to be tolerated, because the medicine men are all about manifesting truth, and this native cultural idea taken together with the dogs name, set out the path to healing Dick’s Machismo: The dog would have to be taught how to enjoy narcissistic sex, instead of biting people.

Initially, the medicine man realized he would have to endure Machismo’s instinct to hump his leg, that was disturbing, but to reach the goal beyond… The Indian told the agent, well, ok, he would do it for ‘dick.’ The agent missed the straight faced Indian humor… and utterly failed his agency’s chartered mandate.

Indians are observational people, primarily, and know the purpose of dog butt sniffing rituals, sort of like when a Blackfoot and Cree spot each other from across a boulevard in downtown Calgary, the hair goes up on both backs and both Indians are thinking to the other “You can sniff my butt” in a historical context, and it is not a friendly thought. The actual butt sniffing between them is purely psychic, preceding any challenge and fight, and the medicine man doctoring Dick’s Machismo would need to circumvent this phenomena to achieve his aims. So sorcery came into play. He collected urine from a bitch in heat, rubbed a little of it on his knee, and bringing more along in a vial, he traveled to heal Dick’s Machismo.

The dog was very happy to see him, no hostility or butt sniffing ritual encountered at all, the Indian told the agent he had to work with the dog alone, brought out a plastic baby rattle wrapped in leather with a few strings with beads, to look convincing, and Dick’s fundamentalist christian body guard was more than happy to leave. Then this Indian began to work with Dick’s Machismo… “Now Machismo, my leg is a good beginning, but we have to show you something, you don’t need my leg or me at all, you can do this all for yourself- just follow her scent to where it feels so right….”

In Blackfoot language we have a word, I don’t know how to spell it in the Whiteman’s language, but it sounds something like oww-woe-tops and it means you are crazy and “everyone knows the Whiteman is crazy” is a Blackfoot proverb proven again and again, example given, Dick Cheney hiring an Indian that hates him, as every Indian should, to tame his Machismo. There is another Blackfoot word I dare not try to pronounce here, but it means “Dog Face.” It is about as bad as Blackfeet language profanity gets, and it is not as tame as it might seem, initially. The term refers to a certain facial expression…

Don and Dick were headed back to Dicks ‘spread’, the agent had called and told them the medicine man had pronounced Dick’s Machismo healed and was leaving, and as fate would have it, the medicine man, and Don and Dick, passed each other on the dirt and gravel country road, the Indian pushing his 1968 Chevy pickup named the “Red Jet” as hard as he could, the worn out 327 V-8 boiling blue smoke into the dust storm he was whipping up behind him, windows down, braids flying, wild eyed panic combined with a maniacal mirth at his crime, co-mingled with prayers to all the gods that he WOULD escape… thinking when he saw Don and Dick “you can sniff my butt” while trying to put on as many miles as he could, as fast as he could, to escape Dick’s ‘spread.’ Don said “God Damn”, Dick in the same moment saying “he must have brought along his whiskey”…

Dick and Don, walking to the kennel, turned a corner bringing Machismo into view in that very moment Machismo was swallowing it, gulping himself down with a certain facial expression… Don had a sudden epiphany, and he exclaimed “Machismo sucks!”, and Dick’s perpetual grimace of hate torqued down to the point it actually broke his primitive semblance of a mind, he pulled his permitted concealed weapon…

The camera pans away to the beautiful red rock cliffs of Wyoming, there was a first shot echoed together with Machismo’s dying yelp, Don shouted “NO!” and the second shot was heard… a pause.. the third shot sounded and America never heard Dick Cheney say “Terror” again.

In the here-after, for all of eternity, Don repeated “Look Dick, look. See Machismo suck!” And for all of eternity Dick shot Machismo and Don, again and again and could not kill them or himself (because they were already dead.)

The Secret Service agent kept his mouth shut about his role in the cause behind the Rumsfeld/Cheney murder/suicide, and no one came after the medicine man who laughed for years, again and again like a child, every time he recalled:

I’m one of the nicest and most unassuming people you’d ever meet. All I wanted was a simple life with a woman who loves me, kids, a garden, a dog, and to be happy. I’d worked hard, for years, sorting out my personal crap and the potential was there

Then, these closet-gay fuckers called neo-cons, went out of their way to louse up my journey to happiness. On account of that fact, this ‘literary endeavor’ came into being

This is an autobiographical novel assembled around various essays deliberately intended to provoke outrage, get teeth grinding, and to put really creepy bugs up stupid people’s butts. Thinking people, on the other hand, could learn a lot reading here

In a world in which 48% of adult Americans believe modern man was ‘created’ in his present form precisely in 4004 BC or alternatively, within the past ten thousand years, and Christian fundamentalism drives the wildly popular sales of Tim LaHaye’s “Left Behind” series of books in which the ‘Anti-Christ’ manifests on Earth as the Secretary General of the United Nations, not to mention the Christian fundamentalist belief ‘Armageddon’, the Biblical war of the end of civilization set in the Middle East, must occur for the Christian faithful to advance to Heaven and now is the time… (The Economist, Special Report on Faith and Politics), one should shudder at the “The New Wars of Religion.” And particularly moving into 2011 with the USA’s military neo-cons pushing for a war with Iran

I was already acutely aware of the issues as put forward by the Economist’s writers, and I in fact have a deeper understanding of the underlying issues of Christian fundamentalism in some small regard at least, having been to Bible College as one of my several failed stops in attempts at social reintegration following my roughly one and one half years in a war zone, witnessing Man’s violence on Man. Both the war and Bible college, in retrospect, were a very American experience. The first time I put on a flight helmet and a little later reached up and flipped the ‘Nav’ toggle switch on the small console in the gunner’s seat of a Bell UH-1H helicopter, magically the Beach Boys were singing “Good Vibrations” in my helmets headphones as I watched the jungle canopy move a few feet below the landing skids on our aircraft. I was young, I was new and it was exciting, I won’t lie to you. I was thrilled. I was not thrilled, however, one and a half years after, on my departure date of November 8th, 1971, after having participated in this corporate profiteering war against “Godless Communism.” The subsequent mental violence I encountered at Azusa Pacific College (now university) seemed no less ugly, in retrospect, the student intellectual violence over matters of doctrine. To be honest, I have been sorting out both experiences ever since. Do I believe in God? No. Am I an Atheist? No. Nor am I Agnostic

It seems to me that everybody has got it wrong. At least in Western Civilization, which has overtaken the world, and I would argue includes Islam and the classic Far East cultures. Any child should be able to grasp that a Human species which harvests life sustaining nature at a pace exceeding life sustaining nature’s ability to regenerate, is pointed to a wrong direction. Let’s keep it there for a moment, child and species. The math is kinder garden. The entire Human species is complicit, or soon will be, with the destruction of the last wild habitat of a possible handful of Amazon tribes not yet assimilated, to sustained economic development. Sustained economic development is the present western economic model which has overtaken the world, stemming from the Industrial Revolution of America and Europe. To deny this is tantamount to claiming the Moon is made of Green Cheese. Like I once heard a Black woman comedian claim: “Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt”

Science and Religion, the great argument, both have it wrong. Science cannot deny it has provided the means to destroy the planet through provision of technology. Religion cannot deny it has failed to instill sustainable Human values that would prevent the planets destruction. Environmentalism as we know it, is a joke too, just more denial. Because the planet has produced a principle of cancer, Sustained Development, where we have already reached a point of no return for civilization, as we know it. To return to a balanced state in Nature, at the least in a presently unchanging social circumstance, most of Humanity must die. If the world’s leading scientists already know this, then they are lying to you by withholding the information or perhaps it is a ‘State Secret.’ Maybe none of them wants to be the first to stand up and say in no uncertain terms “It is all over for us.” If they do not know it, they are just plain stupid

This can all be covered up by arguing that Religion is even more stupid. That would be correct if something could be done about it. That is the problem. Nothing can be done about Religion except tell ignorant people the truth, everyone is almost certainly going to die on the present path. Of course to the ignorant Christian fundamentalists, that translates, yes, everyone except us, because we get to go to Heaven. They actually believe that, and that only makes them equal to those scientists that believe there is a possible ‘saved by science’ future, the greatest of oxymoron. Science put us in this circumstance and asking Science to save us is like using wild land fire control technique in the urban setting: Lighting a backfire. Set fire to the bottom of the building to take fuel away from the fire raging at the top of the building. It makes about as much sense

Here we live in an existence where Sustained Economic Development’s exploitation of nature allows a Saudi prince to own an Airbus 380 super-jumbo jet as a personal flying palace, a $300 million, 240 foot double deck fuselage with a wingspan just short of the length of a football field weighing in at 560 tons. A resource devouring colossus for friends and family that is nothing short of the western world’s greatest individual expression of what I have named “Ego Priapism.” What would be our world’s foremost collective expression of Ego Priapism? Space exploration. What is the point of exploring Space? To create an Ark, to escape our planet wide self-destructive madness? Our Human race should be quarantined. Or we should kill the most massive ecologically destructive projects of science and technology, such as Super Jumbo jets and Space exploration and the immense resource demands of these lunacies, as an investment in intelligence. And as an argument to the Cosmos and Mother Nature that we are worth having around. It makes more sense to make that statement, than to pander to the planet-wide life threatening technological aggressions of Science or the moral aggressions of Religion. Because in the end, they are both exactly that: The same Mental Aggressions. The bed partners that screw out of biological drive and hate, they hate themselves and hate each other with the resource raping of the entire planet, attended by technologically driven wars of faith and religion. It’s all the same thing folks. I’m calling it ‘Honky Mentality’, regardless of Race. Because it all began with the Industrial Revolution, and that happened in Honkydom

In the following ‘Novel’ I am going to take a little bit of Tim LaHaye’s “Left Behind” Anti-Christ away from him, reduce this bit of Anti-Christ to a good guy that is a Devil, albeit a harmless but otherwise highly threatening to peoples common fears Devil, to make a point. That point would be that I was able to learn more about Western Civilization’s foibles of science and religion from a man that had never been to school, completely illiterate, but spoke seven (now dying) Native American languages fluently and who was able to show me reality that does not exist for most of today’s world however, a reality that was once the predominant intelligence of at least two continents: The Americas. He showed me more real intelligence than any Western education, secular or religious, by far. It is a sometimes ‘satyrically’ MEAN read. But it is lucid, something lacking in our increasingly maddened world of the faith driven politics of Religion and the equally ignorant secular god named Science. If there were actually such a thing as a Native American god, it would be androgynous and its name likely would be “Lucid.” Of course the typically paranoid fundamentalist Christians would note the first four letters of that Native god’s name and freak out at the idea of Lucifer. Fine by me

It occurs to me to say an Anti-Christ might not be such a bad thing if one were to dispassionately study Christian fundamentalism. Christianity is a schizophrenic religion and the fundamentalists have the one half of it: that half following the teachings of Saint Paul. Paul’s intolerant teachings are diametrically opposed to the teachings of the Jesus who preached tolerance. It was Paul who made Jesus into the ‘Christ’ from whom we learn our cannibalistic social attitudes: concerning deferred responsibility for our behaviors and meanwhile pursuing the destruction of our planet. It has been established in research it was Paul’s followers who put the words on Jesus lips to conform Jesus to the idea of their supremacy and disregard of living an intelligent, responsible and accountable life. These monotheists need not concern themselves with intelligent living on Earth because they all have a better place to go to. This fundamentalism, in one form or other, has been around a long time. If an Anti-Christ came along to undo a bit of Paul’s work and get people pointed more towards the original ideas of, one could say the ‘un-Christianized’ ideas of the Jesus of history, that would be a good thing

I had a Nazarene professor who had a great regard for some of the secular writers, particularly Albert Camus. He had arrived at the conclusion atheism is Christian civilization’s prodigal son, the rebellious runaway living in denial. He got that right. Because the behaviors all stem from the same mental structures, whether secular or religious, for both. What he could not experience at all, and at that time neither could I, was the thought there could be non-Western mental structures framing an altogether different reality. This is on account of the Western Ego, which in a way, can only see its-self in its ‘imprisment.’ This small book, a mere ‘novel’ of hard hitting social criticism through satire, sets out to explore framing that ‘other reality’

Each segment and character has a point. If you become caught up in either mirth or outrage at the more crude or rude assertions, you will miss those points. So, hate it, love it, but above all pay attention if you want to get it. Up front, here it what ‘getting it’ is all about. People who cannot look at their behaviors, cannot let go of their behaviors. Psychologically ‘imprismed’ mentality, i.e. the Western Ego, cannot see anything beyond the mirror image self. That image must be broken for any individual, or even the World, to be healed

This book is an experiment in juxtaposing idiocy with intelligence, callousness with sensitivity, the obscene with the sacred and chauvinism with feminine awareness. It is a twisted book, deliberately. What might have seemed sympathetic or even smart ideas are sometimes trashed by inverting roles. By the end, a thinking person should question not the intelligence of Humanity, but solely the intelligence of Western Civilization

I am only good to the Indians. Whether their skins are White or Red (or Black or Yellow.) Why?

The most recent genetic research has all sorts of politically correct Social Scientists freaking out at the idea it will be misconstrued to bear out White Supremacy in intelligence. Their own lack of intelligence is to fail recognizing there are different kinds of intelligence in Humans. These politically correct scientists measure by a yardstick that is culturally biased to Western Science which originated with Western (European) mentality or intelligence, a world-wide contagious and malevolent social phenomena

Anyone can learn this mentality to one degree or another, but how useful is it?

Perhaps other people’s genetics are predisposed to an intelligence the European cultures do not know how to measure. Or perhaps it is merely a matter of how our brains are organized differently in disparate cultures. Read and think about it

The Characters

Stone Child is raised Indian in a White skin and subsequently immersed in a strict and stratified (hierarchal) charter school with a hidden administrative fundamentalist White Supremacist Christian agenda: posing as a liberal arts prep school. Because Stone Child has a White skin he is admitted to the school despite the school’s ‘fixed’ lottery admission which normally only allows a few select minority students, to conceal it’s Christian racist/fascist agenda. Discovering he is a “Pagan” child, Stone Child, a sensitive, kind and caring boy, is persecuted with covert but extreme hostility by the Christian staff at the school

Grandpa and Natooauts are a Plains Ojibwa shaman and Blackfoot shaman respectively, both have tribal kin relationships to Napi Mephisto

Spotted Buffalo is a German and the only non-native male Napi has ever known to achieve a fluent understanding of a universal shamanic concept called ‘the timing’

Napi Mephisto, father of Stone Child, is a Devil to the Whites at the school, but in fact is a mere man on an odyssey of personal evolution seeking to discover integrity in himself. He will trust people who easily betray him, including the woman he loves, and discovers how not to hate

Pompositee Succubus is a brutal White racist woman who has risen in paternal fundamentalist Christian society by adopting a male ego to compete. She is the school principal

Bozo is an example of a man who actually believes he is a good guy with credible motivations and yet has a remarkable American ‘good old boy’ chauvinism ingrained in his character, a trait he cannot see in himself. Bozo’s character, because he is always drunk, plays in the presence of women those traits many American men profoundly manifest behind the backs of women… a typical hypocrisy and common social phenomena. Although Bozo actually believes he has views sympathetic to liberal causes, he unconsciously works to destroy those causes with his personality, attitudes and approach. This is because Bozo’s draw to the cause is to stroke his own ego, more so than to do the right thing

Bozo is also a metaphor for the ‘progressives’ on the right and the left, people who do not realize the extent to which neo-con fascists play the game for keeps

Ego Priapism is a man who exhibits every sort of chauvinist, misogynist behavior imaginable. He epitomizes evil manifest in Christian behaviors

Christine is a sensitive, highly intelligent and physically beautiful teacher at the school who struggles to be free of depression stemming from child rape, is defeated by trauma, having contracted herpes from abduction and rape again as a young mother, sees her self esteem destroyed again and again, by men rejecting her because of her rape, herpes and a subsequent mastectomy. Finally, Christine is defeated once more by her own behaviors stemming from adopting aggressive male behavior to survive at the school and consequent instinctive retaliation against Napi who is in love with her

Christine, who does not know of the school administrations secret racist agenda, plays into the fascist’s hands when she deliberately flunks Napi’s son Stone Child, while taunting Napi he can do nothing about it. She does this because of her fear based anger at men and the school’s male teachers who exploit her fear when Napi has fallen in love with her. Christine, feeling sorry for herself, descends into insanity when she subsequently discovers she is actually loved by Napi, her rape and mastectomy would never have stood in the way of Napi loving Christine, the very sort of man she had finally hoped and dreamed of meeting. Or perhaps Christine is merely a cynical act

The teachers Vance, Jack and Marcus are the best friends and protégés of Ego Priapism. These characters are part of the school’s fascist/racist agenda who exploit Christine’s fear at Ego Priapism’s inspiration, seeking to use Christine to destroy ‘the devil’ Napi and drive Stone Child out of the school. Vance and Marcus are retired CIA agents, Jack is a fundamentalist Catholic

The Plot

Vance, with assistance from corrupt law enforcement, makes Napi a target of investigation at the school and in fact masterminds Christine’s abduction and rape with a view she will be manipulated to kill Napi, when her fear is exploited to suggest the ‘criminal’ Napi is bent on doing her and her child harm. Vance went on to personally attempt Napi’s murder

Napi’s dilemma: How do you help law enforcement organizations and intelligence agencies with critical information they need, when elements of the same had been coming after you hard, on false pretenses, with a view to cover their own crimes you had been in (involuntary circumstance) process of uncovering? Who/how/when to trust?

Christine mutates into a cynical cyborg, uncovered before the end of story as former CIA working together with corrupt undercover cops exploiting her tragedies while she is playing into trying to frame Napi for trumped up crimes even as Napi is blowing the lid off the real crimes by administration at the school

A happy ending??? Those have eluded me. But Napi is supposed to have learned not to hate regardless of the outcome. That either rules him out going crazy or makes him insane in a world where hate is normal

Perhaps Christine has been institutionalized by her ‘friends’ and Napi is unaware and eventually moves on to someday discover her fate

But I cannot know, and the story does not say, because her fate is unknown to me in real life. The book has morphed from a fictionalized account of real life events, to straight-up non-fiction at the end

I was, quite frankly, astounded when then Senator Obama voted to give the telecoms immunity from liability during his run for the presidency. Obama is supposedly a Constitutional law professor at the University of Chicago, a position he holds, if not actively, to this day. But life for me has been, as it has been for many of you, and should be for everyone who wishes to grow in their understanding of our national circumstance, an exercise in the death of naivety

In my case, the naivety which had begun to die going to the above noted event, concerns the pure, concentrated and unmitigated gall that the votes of over fifty lawmakers who happen to be senators, a certain famous constitutional law professor among them, could thumb their nose at any oath to uphold the constitution with a ‘yea’ voting in a law that has three constitutional violations on it’s face, an ‘ex post facto’, ‘legislative pardon’ that violates our citizens ‘right to petition for redress’ by denying ‘suit at equity’ or access to the courts via lawsuit

Let me explain

The telecoms played ball with criminals in the Bush administration by participating in what amounted to warrant-less searches and eves-dropping without court order, stealing and handing over peoples personal information in criminal acts Americans had been historically protected from by our constitution and pertinent laws. This opened the telecom corporations to both criminal penalties and civil liabilities. There were crimes committed which should have been prosecuted and people have a right to sue. The potential liability looked pretty big and the telecoms lobbied for immunity

1) ex post facto. Our constitution specifically prohibits Congress making any “ex post facto” law, as typically or historically applied that means a behavior cannot be criminalized after the fact and applied retroactively, or more broadly, new laws cannot be made governing an event that is in the past. In this 2nd instance we have a valid constitutional claim prohibiting making a law excusing past criminal civil liberties violations against our citizens, violations which had created liabilities. What is required for the criminal aspect solely, is a PARDON

2) legislative pardon: Congress cannot give pardons to the individuals within the telecoms who’d signed off on and perpetrated the crimes, that is reserved by our constitution to the president and neither can the congress or the president pardon corporations in any manner excusing civil liability, the corporations must be held accountable and seek any leniency based on possible mitigation factors from the courts, because [3 & 4 combine to make a constitutional principle]

3) the” right to petition for redress” is promised to every citizen who has been wronged and

4) “suit at equity”, that is, the courts existing to do what is right by the citizen, is the avenue provided by our constitution to fulfill the promise of every wronged citizen’s ‘right to petition for redress’ or it should be said there is no right of corporate or government impunity. Citizen’s petitions for remedies and compensation may not be preemptively denied fair hearing, in our courts of law by the Congress

The oath to uphold our constitution had been meant to prevent such patently wrong laws in the first instance. That oath is become patently meaningless to the trained lawyers and professionals who should know these things and make up the congress, points squarely to the core of corrupt process usurping our rule of law

Now, what I’d point out to my conservative friends regarding the Senator Obama vote in the case of the Congress patently and illegally extending immunity to the telecoms in violation of every ‘yea’ voting senator’s oath to uphold the constitution of these United States is: that farcical and patently criminal vote violating our most fundamental rights passed with a majority of Republican senators backing. The Democrats voting in favor of the law were a distinct minority. YOUR conservative people’s representatives are primarily responsible for this particular travesty of justice, which has the effect of trashing our Bill of Rights particularly, and other provisions of our constitution generally

Get comfortable with that thought because now I am going to point to some more Republican chicanery undermining our foundational law that is going to hurt some more if you keep reading and are open and honest and willing to look at what has overcome us all, not at the hands of liberals or conservatives, but on account of all ourselves buying into the protected free speech that is political lies

The American constitution, any and all neo-con ‘Liars for Jesus’ notwithstanding, is based on secular ethics, not Christian morality. There IS a difference and that difference is sometimes quite pronounced, as I will demonstrate was the case with the “don’t ask, don’t tell” law forbidding gays serving openly in our military

As a heterosexual secular ethicist, I tolerate male homosexuals and actually get on quite well with lesbians. They very thought of sex with another man revolts me but that is largely beside the point. What I recognize, and what our founding law supports, is the idea a free society mostly cannot legislate morality. Time should have taught us this, as there have been numerous bigoted and unconstitutional laws in the history of our nation made by fundamentalists of one generation to the next.. but what it all boils down to is, it is our constitution’s demand that it is none of our business if a couple of guys practice fellatio, or lesbians cunnilingus, in the privacy of their home

If they are good citizens in a secular sense, perform their civic duties responsibly and don’t push their private sexual life in peoples face, we have to respect they have a right to their lifestyle and a right to be seen affectionately in public together no differently to my own behaviors with a woman in my life. Do I copulate in public with my opposite sex partner? No. Do they perform sex acts in public with their same sex partner? No. No differently, if I can kiss my woman in public, so may they kiss their same sex partner in public. I don’t have to watch and neither do you.. and insofar as influencing children, there is no more a rude thing to do to a child than force them into denial of our world’s realities, a form of lying, you do not raise aware citizens that way

“Don’t ask, don’t tell” crossed our constitution’s demand that there be “equal protection” of all citizens before the law. A law that allows heterosexual expression of one’s sexual preference only, violates the rights of gays. It is quite clear and it is that simple

Before I go into how President Obama and the Senate Republicans BOTH had subverted out rule of law and damaged our constitution with using the “don’t ask, don’t tell” as a political football, it is in order here to give a further short exam of the secular ethics our law is based upon, versus religious, or in the USA, largely Christian morality

Our nation was founded by people with varying experiences at the hands of religion, with nearly all of those experiences negative. It was not only the persecuted religious minority by the religious majority which migrated to what became the USA, but also the political dissident and intellectual who left a country with officially sanctioned state religion used as a tool of repression, such as employed by the Church of England and the Church at Rome, and the free or secular thinkers who abandoned Germany, France, Italy or Spain among many other nations where religious intolerance persecuted anyone who stepped out of the officially sanctioned lines of thinking. The result is what you see in our First Amendment, it is no accident that lumped together there, are freedom of expression, that protects the secular people particularly, and the freedom of people to practice ANY religion and very importantly, in the same paragraph religion is altogether forbidden in the affairs of state. This was the ‘original intent’ of our founders, again, any ‘Liars for Jesus’ notwithstanding

Of course our founders realized we live in an imperfect world and what they attempted to do was in fact establish a libertarian society which would create an environment for elevated awareness and advancement of the future generations with a generous opportunity for our citizenry- given in our founding law. Thomas Jefferson looked at the New England Puritans as hopelessly backward people living out a primitive demonic fantasy, whereas John Adams had a revulsion similar to homophobia in relation to Benjamin Franklin’s libertine philosophies and lifestyle, examples given, but they and other founders all did one thing very well, they tolerated one another, setting aside differences to both: win the revolution and write our constitution intended to preserve the rights of one and all despite their differences. As a group, these men realized there is a sole avenue to any positive future and that avenue is tolerance. This is driving purpose behind our having established secular republic where religious morals are deliberately allowed no part of government and those recent Supreme Court Justices who best personified these secular principles of tolerance were Republican or Republican appointed, Justice Brennan and Justice Stevens

Now, if the left and right both forget Jesus’ admonition not to throw stones, that is, when we have begun throwing our found(er)ing law through windows like rocks with notes attached, and that is where we are now as a political culture, with smears coming in the name of our constitution, particularly on the right because of “Liars for Jesus” rewriting American history, and stones thrown from the left because of a snotty disdain for any and all things conservative which had been smeared hopelessly by association with the criminal Bush, no matter the fact there are yet many fine and honorable people on the right, all is in a fine mess. And with the people distracted with fighting like a saloon brawl, money and it’s associated personalities in politics are having a field day while narcissistic politicians pandering to corporate greed are running away with our republic

Now, money in politics played off conservative Christian morality against liberal secular ethics with “Don’t ask, don’t tell” and both right & left of the American people lost and money in politics won with people divided and hating

Erstwhile constitutional law professor and faux commander-in-chief Obama had a court ruling in his pocket which flatly stated “Don’t ask, don’t tell” is UNCONSTITUTIONAL. Now, if indeed Obama is commander-in-chief of our military, it was his undeniable duty to simply ORDER “Don’t ask, don’t tell” to be discontinued. But no, manipulative Chicago politicians don’t play the constitutional rules of the game straight, so he has his own Attorney General’s United States Department of Justice hold up the ruling with an appeal, while the senate neo-con Republicans threatened and blustered over repeal of what they know was patently unconstitutional “Don’t ask, don’t tell” law by the congress, an act that would make the court order moot

This play motivated both left and right, rank and file, to fight and pour tremendous energy into hating each other over whether a soldier can get his blow job from a man rather than a woman, and when nobody is looking at that. I hope you all suddenly feel real bright over why real problems this country faces, never get solved, all the while money runs amok in politics and Citizens United is not addressed with a constitutional amendment

But it is actually much, much more than that

It so happens both George Sr and George W Bush had a very close and intimate friend of decades in a real dilemma over “don’t ask, don’t tell.” Obama’s Evangelical Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, a man epitomized in the warning President Eisenhower gave us about the “Military/Industrial Complex” and its power to corrupt our republic, had asked the Congress to repeal “don’t ask, don’t tell” in a move to buy time for his religious extremist generals belonging to the right wing “Officers Christian Fellowship.” The “Officer’s Christian Fellowship is behind the acts causing the U.S. military to be repeatedly sued via the Military Religious Freedom Foundation by over 33,000 active duty United States soldiers because the soldiers are being force fed extremist religious right hate propaganda by their superiors. These extremist officers literally believe “Muslims are the children of Satan” and have pushed the USA efforts in Afghanistan as a religious crusade in an army where recently soldiers who sought combat stress psychological counseling were instead sent to a chaplain who told them their problems would be solved if only they would become “born again in Jesus” and “kill Muslims for Christ.” Small wonder there is epidemic suicide in the United States military not to mention the noted salient facts making an ongoing lie of Obama’s claims the USA is repairing relations with the Islamic world

Of course, in extremist Christian morality homosexuals are aberrant perverts deserving of nothing less than death according to primitive mosaic law and now we will have a whole new class of persecution in our military because the Congress repealed “don’t ask, don’t tell” while Obama’s Attorney General kept the case tied up in appeals, it was much easier for Robert Gates to sweep the related unconstitutional religious morals repression of gays by our extreme Christian generals and their religious extremist officer-minions under the rug. Now, illegal persecutions will fall under military justice structures and be much more difficult to bring justice into line with constitutional principle when gays are beaten or murdered with ‘friendly fire’ and lesbians beaten and raped with the tacit encouragement of the extreme homophobic “Officer’s Christian Fellowship” whose mission is a ‘Godly military’ in a crusade to “kill Muslims for Jesus Christ” in a military which already covers up not only rampant rape of its woman soldiers, but the murder of women as well– and going so far as the leadership at the Pentagon had ordered its top expert on sexual abuse not to testify before the Congress:

“But when it came time for the military to defend itself, the panel was told that the Pentagon’s top official on sexual abuse, Dr. Kaye Whitley, was ordered not to show up despite a subpoena.

Rep. John Tierney, the panel’s chairman and a Democrat from Massachusetts, angrily responded, “these actions by the Defense Department are inexplicable.”

The ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ repeal had been preferred by the close Bush family friend and evangelical Robert Gates because he knows it rendered the Federal Court case moot and everything begins again from scratch with enforcing the rights of soldiers in the military system where his generals can finesse outcomes, and Gates also knows that his generals flipping their middle fingers at a federal judge’s court order overturning ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell” was a real risk because federal judges in theory can take over the operations of entire departments or even branches of government with a “Consent Decree”, pointed at people who refuse to bow to the rule of law and honor courts ordering our institutions into line with constitutional principles. Accordingly, the repeal of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ and attending loss of Federal Court jurisdiction is in actuality a closet victory for the neo-con leadership of the USA’s military who defies our Congress and Constitution

Meanwhile Robert Gates’ generals religious right support base in the senate played to their homophobic electorate at home which collectively flipped out over the vote throwing out an unconstitutional law and would do so over any other act to honor the constitutional rights of ‘fags’ and Gates’s generals escaped a real catch 22. But is it the WOMEN soldiers paying for this religious impunity with 26,000 sexual assaults in 2012 alone in a military with leadership believing the only proper place of any woman is the bedroom and not the workplace. This epidemic goes unaddressed because misogynist officers in the command structure oversee the disciplinary process

All the while, the progressive left had been backing the right thing to do by our constitution, and are the very people Obama’s Department of Justice had been fighting in the courts while holding up with appeal the Judge’s order throwing out ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ and otherwise no player involved except this one judge had honored our constitution, for all of our conservative voters swallowing the bait of their candidates oath to our constitution and professed love for our “Bill of Rights” of which the congressional record of rip-off will hurt the right and left both on other constitutional issues, such as privacy and PRISM. Restated, when you support the congress undermining any aspect of our constitution you don’t like, you have emboldened the congress to undermine aspects of our constitution you hold dear to your heart

And so long as politicians on the right have to pander to voters who follow mental whack jobs like Ann Coulter to keep the conservative vote in one block, while the left can’t shake off the legacy of Chicago style politics, any truly sane center ground allowing for real progress on issues that matter is pie-in-the-sky

There you have it- how in a most perverted sense the Republican senators play a supportive game in cahoots with Obama when it comes to their common cause of keeping the right and left fighting, while money runs amok buying our elections with political lies and in the course of things, trashes our constitution and national sanity

And finally, considering Jesus instruction to ‘give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, the oath to uphold our secular constitution could not be a more clear obligation to those Christian conservatives who would prefer not to be labeled hypocrites ..

Morality masks a plethora of behaviors ethics cannot. Native American humor was all about ethics, that is no matter how harsh a truth, it must be out in the open at the least as a metaphor, the purpose in Native humor is all about keeping things honest.

The humor in western culture, on the other hand, often cannot honestly observe without crossing morality. So humor does not much serve to keep western culture honest, because too many people are afraid to go there. The thing with this is, if people were not afraid to go with honest observations, things could never degenerate to where we are now.

So, I will write about an Indian, a culturally intact Indian. Imagine the insanity of a tribal mentality taught to observe and honestly remark on the world around them suddenly cast adrift into the ego shielding ‘Honky’ sea of political correctness. Now, this native mentality is only certifiably insane because of context, or better said, an out of context circumstance. Because in the native world from which he had sprung, politically correct is actually a buzz word for the circling buzzards of Indian humor, any Native who hears the words ‘politically correct’ is apt to drop everything and listen in to the most recent wisdom and insight (always in the format of the often untranslatable to the Whiteman ‘Indian Humor’) ripping the people who trashed 200 years of treaties and moved on pretending as though nothing had happened.

This endeavor goes to shatter stereotype of the ‘taciturn’ Indian which is actually a reflection of the little understood Native cultural communication phenomena of rather than say something honest to a Whiteman that threatens the Whiteman’s ego and be killed, just shut up. Unless of course, you are not afraid to die.

For simple literary device sake, we will make this Indian 1) White skinned and 2) the last of his kind. How could this happen and the said Native persona is alive in the 21st century, a full 150 years since the Native custom of a White captive child raised to be Indian?

Well now, to be honest in the Native way, we must address this portion of the literary endeavor with a joke story drawn from real life, a sort of collage of facts assembled from bits and pieces of diverse experience, combined with anecdotal information to create the culturally intact inherent Native wisdom found in their humor. In other words, parts of the story from here out is an autobiographical facts incorporated, multi-faceted rip-off of other peoples life stories and experience. And because unlike the White world, the Native world entertains paradox in daily approach to life, some more of what follows is simply made up from the imagination’s fund of plausible improbabilities.

We’ll call the Indian “Ron” although his native name in the Cree Indian country he hails from is ‘Moon-i-Yas’ which can be translated either “Not like us” or “Paleface.” In “Ron’s” case it is “Paleface” when properly translated, because the other translation applies to people who behave like Whites, rather than merely look like them. And by Native definition, “Ron” is Indian on account of his cultural behavior, his ‘pale face’ simply being unfortunate circumstance or, better said from the Indian perspective, that peculiar cosmic joke of life circumstance which one way or other manifests the Trickster aspect in all Native experience.

To kick off the story, back in the late 1940s there were people just like today’s truly Honky folk, real White people, that behaved in all sorts of self- repressed ways and repressed their own kids because of their staunch Puritan belief in H.L. Menecken’s maximum that ‘proper’ Puritans must preoccupy themselves with the horrifying thought “Someone, somewhere, might be happy.” So they learned to follow Jesus command to ‘love’ by ‘loving’ to hate.

Because of the ‘love’ factor in ‘loving’ to hate themselves, their kids and their fellow man, making ‘love’ is more often a rape than not, ‘loving’ their brothers and sisters is ‘loving’ to tell other people how to live their lives, and ‘loving’ security is to create an insecure society so they can ‘love’ the idea of a police state.

Now the daughters of these fundamentalist people, whether the arch-conservative Protestant or the ultra-conservative Catholic, are not so different to some of today’s young women, raised in families that with bared fangs dare anyone to so much as mention sex to their children let alone have it taught anywhere other than at the kegger parties of the young people, who learn to hide the realities of their lives from their parents because you are punished whether you lie or tell the truth. So lying becomes in vogue because if you are young and you lie, you might not be caught and punished for enjoying yourself, whereas if you tell the truth you will be punished every time. So impromptu sex education at the young peoples kegger parties gives a whole new meaning to expressions such as ‘powerpoint’ and the many unwed young mothers resulting are simply one manifestation of God’s will and Jesus commandment that people ‘love’ (other peoples misery in the case of Michelle Bachmann and the Puritans.)

As fate would have it, in the late 1940s a young Catholic girl had gone from her conservative family upbringing and all girls school, where the nuns would not touch sex-ed with the proverbial ten foot pole, in Chicago, to college at Gonzaga in Washington State where she was introduced to sex as a sorority girl by innumerable happy to oblige young men .. at the ‘Girls Gone Wild’ parties before the era of exploiting these events on video. Concealing her inevitable pregnancy from her far away folks, not having known what a condom is, she was driving home to Chicago with her new born, this was in 1950, give or take a year or so, and dropped the infant off on the doorstep at the Catholic Rectory at Havre, Montana, with a note pinned on the swaddling infants dress: “Ron”

A Chippewa Medicine Man from the nearby Rocky Boy’s Indian Reservation was at the cinema close by, he enjoyed the classic ‘Bugs Bunny’ cartoons preceding the movie and paid his entry fee for that but then always left. The movies themselves were non-sense to him. Walking along the street, he noticed a dropped envelope, picked it up and was surprised to see it was stuffed with cash. He saw the black ink stamp of the Catholic parish on the envelope and walked to give it to the priest at the rectory, and found the infant. Stepping around the child and standing on the step above, he knocked and the priest answered the door. The Medicine Man stated “I found your lost money” and handed the surprised priest the envelope. The priest, who hated this Medicine Man his Native parishioners would sneak off to see behind his back, shouted “Returning this money won’t buy YOUR way out of Hell!” and slammed the door in the Indian’s face, before he could tell him about the child.

The Indian knocked several times more, and patiently waited, but there was no further opening of the door. So, he picked up the kid and took “Ron” home.

Given to the Medicine Man’s niece who had her own infant the same age, “Ron” was suckled, named “Moon-i-Yas”, surrounded with love and the native joke the newly found ‘twin’ was result of “Indian Immaculate Conception.” No one of the Indians wanted to give the found kid to the meaner than shit racist White people at Havre, Montana, it just seemed wrong. When it came time to take the infants to the Indian Agency for birth certificates and enrollment, the Agency people just figured they were fraternal twins and there was a White father of the one child. So “Ron” grew up Indian. He moved to Al-boo-quark-ee in the southwest because of his fond memories of the old Medicine Man mimicking Bugs Bunny’s pronunciation of that city’s name.

Sixty odd years after “Ron’s” birth, President Obama ordered DNA tests on all Indians to reduce the Native Enrollment and save money better spent on covert wars in Africa and drone murders than Indian health, kicking Indians that could not demonstrate 75% Native American blood off their reservations. It was discovered Moon-i-Yas, a.k.a. “Ron”, was the last White captive and he became a national sensation. What bloodthirsty savage had murdered his family and kidnapped this child? And anyway, a White Indian had to be a subversive, the bloodthirsty murdering savages that raised “Ron” had to have imparted their pagan licentiousness to him. The FBI was ordered to investigate “Ron”, it was a matter of ‘National Security.’

Meanwhile “Ron” had discovered a few things about White people. Like when an arch-conservative fundamentalist Republican principal of a lily-white charter school surreptitiously run as a private Christian institution that doubled as a cover for intelligence agents masked as teachers who break every civil rights law you can imagine, have discovered you have raised your kid Indian, all of the state apparatus is arrayed against you for the satanic act of being an ultra-liberal permissive parent. Allergies causing red eyes are interpreted as the child being a devil, but because there is no law to charge you with for that, you are investigated for drugs. When you are courageous enough to fight back for your kid and call a spade a spade, it is ‘undue hostility towards authority’ and you are investigated for terrorism. Failing every effort at criminal entrapment and being counter-investigated, assassins are dispatched by the neo-con hate mongers… and failing again and again it all just keeps getting bigger- FBI criminals implicated, Department of Defense criminals implicated, CIA criminals implicated, the criminal Church implicated, the National Security Agency implicated, allied intelligence, MOSSAD particularly, implicated.. meanwhile the White, Native American Jason Bourne-savant-idiot-trickster- clown has ‘pantsed’ the fascists again and again!

Because “Ron” really IS Indian, he fights back with taunts and satires, in the post –modern weapon of blogs. “Ron” taunts the establishment with the idea of “Jewels Misogyny”, wherein these neo-conservative & neo-liberal closet-gay institutions of accelerated education attended by the children of the military-industrial rich and powerful, only the brightest and most beautiful women teachers are hired… and must adopt masculine persona like so many ‘bull dikes’ as have the Michelle Bachmanns of this world, women who consequently marry self-repressed homosexuals attracted to these so-called women because of their male persona. They are all ‘men’ resembling nothing so much as castrated mannequins in drag (say, how’s that ‘cures gays’ clinic going? Remember Jesus saying “Heal thyself”?)

The end result? Either liberal women who hate themselves (Jewels Misogyny) for their participation in this travesty, job security being more important than ethics and fighting back or, women with “Acquired Ego Priapism Syndrome” like Michelle Bachman or the ‘imaginary’ school principal. Women who behave like sexist and racist men. Woman-male rapists of our values of tolerance and compassion, the liberal and libertarian values that are uniquely American, the ability to live and let live. Women of Bachmann’s class which join with criminal-fascist men in covering up constitutional crimes with religious façade Obama is afraid to pick on.

Of course the initial culture clash long ago was the Indians being shocked at how harshly the Puritans treated their children, the cause of many a ‘captive White’ raised in Native freedom and, conversely the Puritan horror at the liberty of the Native children resulting in the practice of “The only good Indian is a dead Indian.” Not so different to Bachmann’s persecution of the American Muslim, with her racist slurs thinly disguised behind sharia law hysteria. Bachmann is a Puritan, psychologically male, W.A.S.P. with Acquired Ego-Priapism Syndrome, in effect a chauvinist as pathologically erect as any male serial rapist.

What I mostly enjoy about this story is, in the modern politically correct world where only women can refer to a woman as a bitch, and get away with it, no differently than only gays may refer to themselves as queers or fags, only Blacks can call themselves Niggers or Asians can call themselves Gooks or Chinks, Mexicans self-refer as Beaners, Jews calling themselves Kikes, Indians laughing at the idea of being Prairie Niggers, and Sheep bleating to themselves they are Meadow Maggots, without a hate crime referral, but this Indian author can call the right wing White fascist people in absolute racist terms “Honkies” and totally get away with it because he is White skinned. I say that especially because of Supreme Court Justice Alito referring to “Marauding Indians” in a context of self-defense in recent decision on firearms, I suppose he thinks we should be hunted like wolves from planes. But because no one ordinarily can comment on physical attributes such as gender or skin color outside their own race or sex freely, this prevents in any politically correct circumstance the real or broad examination of the perverse Puritan sexist and racist BEHAVIORS tied to the descriptions which underlie psychologically male, HONKY, right-wing criminal women like Bachmann; who resembles nothing so much as the drag queen Jack Kerouac must have fantasized himself, had he dared to be openly gay.

There is little question the American founders were, without exception, ‘believers’ in a supreme deity or that is to say “God.” Their commonality of belief ends with that statement. The (no) ‘Establishment’ clause of the anti-federalist founders (as opposed the ‘Federalist’ founders) enshrined in the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, derived from a consensus there could never be any one religion in supremacy in these United States.

This consensus derived from historical experience showing a ‘state religion’ is inimical to freedom. The one man responsible for a widespread support from the general populace supporting this consensus was Thomas Paine.

John Adams had stated: “Without the pen of Paine, the sword of Washington would have been in vain”

The purpose of the (no) ‘Establishment’ clause derived from our several founders unshakeable notion that any church in supremacy results in persecution of freedom. In their time, this notion was based on very real history, pointing particularly to the Church of England and the Church at Rome. Both had initiated policies in collusion with government(s) resulting in exodus of minority religions and political free thinkers, to what eventually became our American republic. The (no) ‘Establishment’ clause was intended to guard against these persecutions repeating history at future time in the USA.

That John Adams recognized this would be a necessary safeguard, despite his conservative Christian faith, is to be demonstrated in his statement on Paine. Furthermore, Adams had endorsed the language: “The government of the United States is in no sense founded upon the Christian religion” when he signed the ‘Treaty of Tripoli’

Thomas Jefferson wrote: “Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between church and State” – President Thomas Jefferson in a letter to Danbury Baptist Association.

Jefferson even took the idea further. His endorsement of a (no) ‘Establishment’ clause invited non-Christian faiths to stand on a par with any Christian faith in the newly founded United States: “a singular proposition proved that it’s protection of opinion was meant to be universal. Where the preamble declares that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the word ‘Jesus Christ,’ so that it should read ‘a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion,’ the insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and infidel of every denomination” -commenting on proceedings in the Virgina Assembly.

Benjamin Franklin concurred with Jefferson: “If the Mufti of Constantinople were to send an emmissary to preach to us Mohammedism, he would be provided a pulpit”

James Madison goes even farther: “Experience witnesses that ecclesiastical establishments, instead of maintaining the purity and efficacy of religion, have had a contrary operation. During almost 15 centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What has been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution”

The last word inspiring the (no) ‘Establishment’ clause is given to Thomas Paine, the man Adams had implied motivated the troops to serve under General Washington:

“I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church. All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit“

The USA Constitution’s (no) ‘Establishment’ clause: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” ..

“IT has been my intention, for several years past, to publish my thoughts upon religion. I am well aware of the difficulties that attend the subject, and from that consideration, had reserved it to a more advanced period of life. I intended it to be the last offering I should make to my fellow-citizens of all nations, and that at a time when the purity of the motive that induced me to it, could not admit of a question, even by those who might disapprove the work.

“The circumstance that has now taken place in France of the total abolition of the whole national order of priesthood, and of everything appertaining to compulsive systems of religion, and compulsive articles of faith, has not only precipitated my intention, but rendered a work of this kind exceedingly necessary, lest in the general wreck of superstition, of false systems of government, and false theology, we lose sight of morality, of humanity, and of the theology that is true.

“As several of my colleagues and others of my fellow-citizens of France have given me the example of making their voluntary and individual profession of faith, I also will make mine; and I do this with all that sincerity and frankness with which the mind of man communicates with itself.

“I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life.

“I believe in the equality of man; and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy.

“But, lest it should be supposed that I believe in many other things in addition to these, I shall, in the progress of this work, declare the things I do not believe, and my reasons for not believing them.

“I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.

“All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.

“I do not mean by this declaration to condemn those who believe otherwise; they have the same right to their belief as I have to mine. But it is necessary to the happiness of man, that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.

“It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime. He takes up the trade of a priest for the sake of gain, and in order to qualify himself for that trade, he begins with a perjury. Can we conceive any thing more destructive to morality than this?

“Soon after I had published the pamphlet Common Sense, in America, I saw the exceeding probability that a revolution in the system of government would be followed by a revolution in the system of religion. The adulterous connection of church and state, wherever it had taken place, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, had so effectually prohibited by pains and penalties, every discussion upon established creeds, and upon first principles of religion, that until the system of government should be changed, those subjects could not be brought fairly and openly before the world; but that whenever this should be done, a revolution in the system of religion would follow. Human inventions and priestcraft would be detected; and man would return to the pure, unmixed and unadulterated belief of one God, and no more.

“Every national church or religion has established itself by pretending some special mission from God, communicated to certain individuals. The Jews have their Moses; the Christians their Jesus Christ, their apostles and saints; and the Turks their Mahomet, as if the way to God was not open to every man alike.

“Each of those churches show certain books, which they call revelation, or the word of God. The Jews say, that their word of God was given by God to Moses, face to face; the Christians say, that their word of God came by divine inspiration: and the Turks say, that their word of God (the Koran) was brought by an angel from Heaven. Each of those churches accuse the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all.

“As it is necessary to affix right ideas to words, I will, before I proceed further into the subject, offer some other observations on the word revelation. Revelation, when applied to religion, means something communicated immediately from God to man.

“No one will deny or dispute the power of the Almighty to make such a communication, if he pleases. But admitting, for the sake of a case, that something has been revealed to a certain person, and not revealed to any other person, it is revelation to that person only. When he tells it to a second person, a second to a third, a third to a fourth, and so on, it ceases to be a revelation to all those persons. It is revelation to the first person only, and hearsay to every other, and consequently they are not obliged to believe it.

“It is a contradiction in terms and ideas, to call anything a revelation that comes to us at second-hand, either verbally or in writing. Revelation is necessarily limited to the first communication — after this, it is only an account of something which that person says was a revelation made to him; and though he may find himself obliged to believe it, it cannot be incumbent on me to believe it in the same manner; for it was not a revelation made to me, and I have only his word for it that it was made to him.

“When Moses told the children of Israel that he received the two tables of the commandments from the hands of God, they were not obliged to believe him, because they had no other authority for it than his telling them so; and I have no other authority for it than some historian telling me so. The commandments carry no internal evidence of divinity with them; they contain some good moral precepts, such as any man qualified to be a lawgiver, or a legislator, could produce himself, without having recourse to supernatural intervention.”

a nocturnal, highly vocal lizard that has adhesive pads on the feet to assist in climbing on smooth surfaces. It is indigenous to coastal regions of Vietnam. • Gekkonidae family • ORIGIN middle 1960s.: imitative of its cry.

The Great Phuc Uuus Massacre

Iraq bothered me because I was certain my eldest son would go [he did not]… a peacekeeper veteran of Bosnia in the Guard. Iraq also bothered me because it seemed we had learned nothing POLITICALLY as a result of Vietnam. Our Vietnam deep involvement was engineered by our combined military/State Department/CIA/corporate industrial complex profit motive with the phony ‘Gulf of Tonkin’ incident… a remarkably false event sharing the identical value of political deceit found in our accusations of Iraq having weapons of mass destruction and Al Qaida ties… one million dead Iraqi civilians later, this is all a part of process in my head, a process not entirely set aside from multiple attempts on my life for my combined life experience and politic- going to military intelligence and psy-ops skills… not only my successes as an investigator

The bottom line is this: It is all about money, a corporate share-holder orgy in government and, now days, with the beyond ‘Orwellian’ twist of religious fanaticism, Christian fanaticism and corporate profiteering Christian driven Islamic fanaticism, thrown in

I remembered the Medal of Honor winner who would not cut his hair for Nixon at his White House ceremony after leaving the Army, he’d told the press “I was stoned and I freaked out”… relating to his acts of heroism. I wonder what our ‘Bible Patriots’ of today’s American military’s 15,000 strong fundamentalist “Officer’s Christian Fellowship” would think of him? Maybe they would spit on him like the rumors had of our returning Vietnam Veterans experience?? That never happened to me..

Our Veterans service organizations drive off members with their redneck social ignorance and drunken bar scene of regaled war glory, lives and years past, in utter disdain of persons like myself, providing no sober and peace devoted alternative… “blessed are the peace makers”, Jesus wasn’t talking about Colt revolvers… and they can get you psycho money, as your veteran advocate, with their fill in the blank (your name) forms requesting disability reviews for physical and/or mental disability

Funny how that psycho rating climbs but not the rating for physical disability even with your health deteriorating as you help Native Americans win successes against corporate criminals… corporate criminals who counterfeit compliance to the law to steal Indian resources.. corporations like Chevron with Condoleezza Rice sitting on the board of directors.. while attorneys with names like Yoo write legal briefs to assist fixing things on the inside

I did not appreciate having to go to the same major university medical center the Veterans Administration sends it schizophrenics to be studied, for my evaluation, and pay quite a bit of money out of pocket to get a clean bill of mental health and undo their label ‘psycho’… how would they turn my clean result down? They could not. Our labeling and persecuting political enemies had been a bit more careful than that of the old Soviet Union… our more effective dissidents are quietly murdered, typically with difficult to detect poisonings meant to look like natural deaths, or arranged accidents when they cannot be discouraged or discredited. Very likely people such as Karen Silkwood and Paul Wellstone, not only Omar Torrejos

And then you have veterans peace organizations driving off (with their socialist drivel) people who’d otherwise be members, leftists who won’t work with the conservative anti-war folk to push change for our common secular sanity and very life survival

Our grassroots reform culture, liberal and conservative, seem like a couple that always fight, gossip and consequently turn off the neighbors… to the wealthy corporate criminals’ advantage and life is a drama like some morbid reality show, when in fact this essay is a fair glimpse of a very present reality in relation to reality past… we are NOT learning from our mistakes and uniting to force change in our politics, rather allowing the same players play the same subversions of our rule of law with their corporate criminal influence buying game in ever more dangerous gambits in an ever more dangerous world

The 82nd Airborne at Fort Bragg, 1972

I did not know anyone who went to church. Some undoubtedly did, but it was not pushed in our face. Our self-sobriquet in those days, the jumping junkies, was a barracks neurosis of fitness, drugs and frequent lockdowns

A murderous collective killing machine to face in battle, no doubt, despite numerous soldiers whose life was a cocktail of fitness and drugs… men that easily could win commendations or medals for valor, ‘freaking out while stoned’, our training was that good, that had been demonstrated by many of us already in Vietnam

No one I knew needed to be motivated to patriotism or simply do a good job as a soldier with mandatory Bible studies, the fundamentalist crap being force fed today’s troops. I’m getting ahead of myself in the story’s timeline, but I wonder how our Vietnam experience stacks up to today’s military’s fundamentalist Christian reality, my recollections are of a more honest military, or are just more honest recollections and certainly no less brave

Fort Lewis, 1969

In Indian country, where I am from, it is the size of your heart that counts. I was in two fights in basic training, and I did not start either of them. The first was picked by my trainee squad leader who thought he had to be a bully to lead. I did not back down. He was easily 1/3 larger than I, physical stature and weight. He won that fight, but I was not defeated and he knew it… I gave him far more than he ever could have expected, in fact about the limit he could handle, and showed no fear. He left me alone after that go round and stopped picking on people. He was smart enough to learn. The second guy I fought, closer to my size and none too bright, was put onto me by a bigger guy that did not want to take me on. I made short work of him. No one made us go to church

Fort Rucker, 1969-1970

Your army gratitude for graduating the light observation helicopter maintenance class at the aviation school… which means you could be sitting on the back floor of a four seater, legs out the side, feet on the skids with a machine gun in your lap, playing tease for a gunship you are partnered with in a ‘hunter-killer team’… is to be washing pots and pans in the school’s cafeteria while waiting for your assignment

West! Vietnam! I never saw the guy’s face, my orders appeared as papers clutched in a fist thrust through the slot for trays with dirty dishes… my reaction was a strange mix of adrenaline and sinking stomach… nobody was making us go to church

At Travis Air Force Base, 1970

Shipping out, I’d heard of the Vietnam ‘fuck you lizards’ and took it to be an environmental psychosis, I did not, I could not, see this as anything short of a soldier’s urban legend. Lizards simply do not say “fuck you.” That was my naive reality… and the fact is, no one was marching us to church. And lack of church is NOT why we lost Vietnam

At Vung Tau, 1970-71

I’d been transferred to Vung Tau after six months inland as a member of the smallest combat assault aviation unit in Vietnam, I had been assigned to brigade aviation at a brigade of elite light infantry shock troops. We were brutal to the enemy in combat AND unchurched. I’d never heard a ‘fuck you lizard’ so much as mentioned, let alone seen or heard one

It was on my first night shift guard duty at Vung Tau, I’d had smoked a joint of potent Vietnamese marijuana, that was normal by now, was settled in behind my small sandbagged breastwork for what I figured would be a boring night. And then, from ten feet behind me… clearly, and not meekly, a human voice had stated: “Phuc uuu!”

With every hair follicle on my body an instant goose bump, I spun 180 degrees and would have cut anyone standing there in half with my Colt automatic rifle… if someone had been there

Now, worse than the non existent Viet Cong taunting me, the marijuana paranoia called the ‘noids’, began to work. I had completely forgotten about ‘fuck you lizards’ and my sanity was crumbling… no one at Vung Tau had warned me of this enemy because, for the soldiers already stationed there, this was ‘normal.’ I probably thought, ‘Man, I should have gone to church’

The lizard’s accent is like an American saying ‘fuck you’ through a kazoo, only 95% human and 5% kazoo… hence the perfect Vietnamese accent and spelling- ‘phuc uuu’

It must have been the alpha male phuc uuus which were at times particularly vocal, a sort of major mucus throat clearing, before hurling the spitwad: “oh-aw-ickk-phuc-uuu-phuc-uuu-phuc-uuu”

The CIA propaganda teams trained the lizards, that and the fact of our Vung Tau Viet Cong phuc uuu heroin smugglers, kind of makes me snigger at the idea of $500 million Taliban heroin profit claims… because it was phuc uuu reptiles dressed like ‘Men in Black’ delivering the heroin via the CIA’s “Air America” planes, to supply our Vung Tau addicted soldiers

The Vung Tau Viet Cong phuc uuu lizards were selling our good food downtown, using U.S. Army trucks to deliver, our soldiers had to buy their own food back to get a decent meal, sort of making me laugh at the thought of our ‘Christian’ military leaders pointing fingers to corruption in Afghanistan, following on Halliburton in Iraq

One of our cooks was so outraged at preparing the substituted friendly fire killed Water Buffalo for our meal, he made marijuana brownies for our phuc uuus cadres (and went to jail saying oh-phuc)

The lizards took a cut of the taxi fares, from those taxis allowed to use the premium parking outside our base gate, the phuc uuus drove up the fares this way and our soldiers drove the taxis away from the gate with a wrist rocket and ball bearings, muttering: ‘phuking phuc uuus’

That got us all into trouble and we became the phuc uuus confessing in formation. Our phuc uuu 1st Sergeant: “I want the device and I want the responsible parties to step up front and center!” From the back of the formation: “Phuc uuu.” That came from my squad and suddenly the 1st Sergeant was at the rear of our formation, in my face, “West! Who said that!!” From the front of the formation came the words: “Phuc uuu”

The ‘Biggus Diccus’ scene in Monty Python’s “Life of Brian” HAD to have been inspired by the “phuc uuu” interrogation at Vung Tau

And the one guy I knew of in our company who’d ever gone to church, our Jesus freak, was a good guy, never pushing it in our face, but most of us knew no piety at all and we did great work rebuilding the war torn helicopters

At Camp Frenzel-Jones (Long Binh) 1970

We called him O, no kidding, simply that, O. Behind his back some called him Psych-O, one of his helicopter combat team-mates had told me O became sexually aroused in combat. I thought that was interesting but who cared? O was a killer and a good one and, that was premium in our business

But killers, in the military, not only on the street, must be managed, like the time I was driving an errand and O had wanted to come along because it was along the route where he could buy good opium laced marijuana cigarettes. Coincidentally, these were commonly called ‘o-jays’ by the soldiers, rather fitting… I stopped at the small business stand on the highway between Long Binh and Saigon where O made his purchase, I’d gotten out of the truck and was checking things out when O’s eyes suddenly seemed to roll up behind his lids and come up again from below, a different person… he had pulled a 38 caliber pistol from his pocket and was about to shoot his drug dealer for short changing him when I stepped between them, pushed O’s arm holding the pistol away while making eye contact and saw recognition registering as I told him “Get in the truck O, we’re leaving…” I was not a serious pothead, just curious

O was a 50 caliber door gunner on a Bell UH-1-H model helicopter converted to a gunship, a frightening killing machine packing O’s 50 Cal, as well there was a modified XM-27 ‘mini’ gun system: a large volume, multiple barrel, high speed modern 7.62mm crew directed Gatling gun driven by an electric motor- a grenade launcher was onboard, also assorted hand grenades that could simply be dropped out of the aircraft by the crewmen (our crews flew with the doors removed), these included fragmentation and ‘white phosphorus’ grenades… a white phosphorus grenade dropped into enemy positioned using jungle canopy for cover can be especially effective in panicking and flushing targets into open space where they are easy kills. I don’t recall we were ever taught this was a war crime violating Geneva Conventions, or maybe it was not banned yet, but I doubt it would have mattered… it was about killing the armed enemy in combats and it was called ‘whatever works’

Being good killers does not come naturally to just anyone, and most of us, unlike O, had to learn. Many learned to kill by learning to hate. I recall one of my fellow soldier’s laughing about having dropped a CS (tear) gas grenade on a Buddhist funeral procession as they flew over at low level… I thought that was pretty mean but it was emotional survival to him, he had learned to hate the “Gooks” in order to feel right about killing them. He might still be maintaining his hate and emotional survival by telling war stories while drunk in a Veterans of Foreign Wars club

None of the soldiers I knew believed our political leaders godless communist enemies were ‘children of Satan’ we could indiscriminately kill, families included… that is happening now days with our special operations in Afghanistan… Our Vietnam soldiers accepted surrenders and I never knew of any murder of civilians other than the My Lai massacre and the murder I prevented. But our crews did have lots of those ‘feels right’ hate opportunities to do things like drop tear gas on outdoor weddings and funerals.. because we flew just above treetop level most of the time… in order to be a brief and fleeting target away from any unexpected enemy ground fire

Back at Vung Tau

I don’t know or cannot recall who began it. Maybe it was a soldier snapped and said “I’ll show you fuck you!” It was after dark, on a weekend. Between thirty and forty of us had not gone to town on pass because we had no money or simply did not care to. The numerous phuc uuus were especially vocal that night. Someone had found a stick and began killing the phuc uuus and the soldiers suddenly mobilized as though ordered to the attack and went on a lizard killing rampage. Flashlights were brought out. More and more killing sticks were located. It went on for maybe two or three hours, until a living phuc uuu could not be found. Lizard bodies were everywhere

If there was anything we could have learned in Vietnam, it is: even the lizards were meant to hate us